MAP14: The Inmost Dens (Doom II)

MAP14: The Inmost Dens is the fourteenth map of Doom II. It was designed by American McGee and uses the music track "The Dave D. Taylor Blues." The par time is 2:30.

The level is remarkable in its style and amount of aesthetic details. Consequently, it has the biggest amount of sidedefs (2,587) for any Doom or Doom II level. The visual style of the level became particularly influential, with many similarly styled maps produced since Doom II's release, most notably Neurosphere from The Plutonia Experiment.

Essentials
From the start, go right and enter the staircase a little way off. Continue past the red door, around the next corner and through the door to the right. Step into the square of light in the next short corridor to open the doors. Go through the one straight ahead. Continue around the building to the right. Go up the stairs and through the door to enter the building. Get a running start and jump through the largest window. You should land on a bridge on the far side of the grey stone barrier. Continue along, across the water and through the arched doorway. Then take a left. At the end is the red skull key.

Return to the red door near the start. If you fall into the water on your way, ride one of the many circular lifts up and drop onto land. Flip the switch behind the red door, and red columns nearby will lower. Go through the door behind them and cross into the next outdoor area. Kill all the enemies there, enter the building and get the blue skull key.

Come back to the second outdoor area once more and run through the window again, landing on the bridge. This time, head right after passing through the arched doorway. You will reach a dead end with a window to the right. Run through the window and onto the adjacent platform. If you fall in the water, you can just use the platform like a lift. Continue along the next hallway to its end and across the bridge to the blue door. After passing through it, continue straight forward through the building, running across the gap, to reach the exit.

Other points of interest
On Hurt me plenty or lower, there is a berserk pack at the northern end of the walkway with the red door. On higher levels, a medikit is found there.

When you have located the blue key, you can jump in the surrounding water. There is a door behind a corner on the eastern side of the area. As you turn right after entering the door, you will find a barred room with a soul sphere inside. The bars are opened by a trigger in front of them, and they are helpful if the room is populated by an arachnotron. If you stay in the room when the bars close, you can make an escape through a window to the second outdoor area and use a lift to drop onto land again.

Alternatively, the sphere can be collected on an earlier phase. You can reach the barred entrance by dropping in the water at the second outdoor area and using the lift in its southwest corner. Furthermore, the mentioned door can be opened from its northern side, which provides you an optional route to the blue key area once you have pressed the switch to lower the red bars.

Back at the waters of the blue key area, you can travel to the northwest corner. Once you are beyond the northern wall, you will see a narrow tunnel in the distance. Enter the wooden door there, grab the rocket launcher in the revealed room and press the switch to lower a lift to the starting point. If you step onto the flickering elevation nearby before going through the door, the ceiling in the aforementioned room will start to crush. The motion can be interrupted by returning to the door again. If the ceiling stops too low, you need to start the crusher again and time the interruption so that you are able to enter the room.

To be precise, the rocket launcher area can also be accessed via another means. The section of the stonewall between the red door and the lowest step of the staircase can be climbed upon from the step as it, unlike those in the staircase, is not impassable. Thus, you can fall in the water to fetch the weapon. You can go beyond the southern wall and proceed further to the blue key area when you have lowered the red bars, allowing you a total of three different routes of approach.

Official
There are no official secrets in this level.

Non-official

 * 1) In the dark chamber that is visible through windows at the start, there is a wall with a torch on it. Press it to reveal a box of rockets. In addition, the chamber itself holds a combat armor.
 * 2) Outside the blue door, the walkway continues around the building. A door can be opened at the southern end, which reveals a nook next to the decorative formation inside the building. The place holds a medikit.

Bugs
If the player activates the crusher of the rocket launcher room while the wooden door is open, a Hall of mirrors effect can be seen on the wall of the crusher at the doorway because of a missing texture (the upper section of sidedef 1,956, linedef 1,259). It was a situation the designer had not taken into account, as the two windows of the room have the corresponding texture set.

Due to the extreme size of the map, saved games will not load sometimes.

Before flipping the switch behind the red door, the player can become trapped between the red bars and the first door to the southern entrance. At the first building, if you jump out the southern-most eastern window on to the south-eastern moat edge, you can follow it to the red bar area and run diagonally around the blue torch and over the ledge. You cannot open the door or lower the bars from inside this section.

Speedrunning
As this level does not contain official secrets, the NM 100S category is redundant.

Current Compet-n records
The Compet-n records for the map are:

The data was last verified in its entirety on July 5, 2020.

Current DSDA records
The records for the map at the Doom Speed Demo Archive are:

The data was last verified in its entirety on August 12, 2023.

Player spawns
This level contains seven spawn points:
 * 1) facing east. (thing 8)
 * 2) facing east. (thing 9)
 * 3) facing east. (thing 10)
 * 4) facing north. (thing 11)
 * 5) facing north. (thing 15)
 * 6) facing south. (thing 21)
 * 7) facing east. (thing 135)

Things
This level contains the following numbers of things per skill level: